VMware addressed two zero-day flaws demonstrated at Pwn2Own Vancouver 2023

VMware addressed zero-day flaws that can be chained to achieve arbitrary code execution on Workstation and Fusion software hypervisors.

VMware released security updates to address two zero-day vulnerabilities (CVE-2023-20869, CVE-2023-20870) that were chained by the STAR Labs team during the Pwn2Own Vancouver 2023 hacking contest against Workstation and Fusion software hypervisors.

The STAR Labs (@starlabs_sg) team used an uninitialized variable and UAF to hack the VMWare Workstation virtualization software. They earned $80,000 and 8 Master of Pwn points.

The vulnerability CVE-2023-20869 is a stack-based buffer-overflow issue that resides in Bluetooth device-sharing functionality. A local attacker can exploit the flaw to execute code as the virtual machine’s VMX process running on the host.

The flaw CVE-2023-20870 is an information disclosure issue in the functionality for sharing host Bluetooth devices with the VM. An attacker can exploit the vulnerability to read privileged information contained in hypervisor memory from a VM.

The virtualization giant recommends as a workaround for both CVE-2023-20869 and CVE-2023-20870 to turn off the Bluetooth support on the virtual machine.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, VMware)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.